• Live Blogging the Nov. 9 Republican Presidential Debate

    Tonight, CNBC is hosting, along with the Michigan Republican Primary, a Republican presidential debate focused on the economy. The debate is hosted by Maria Bartiromo and John Harwood at Oakland University in Rochester, MI. The participants include the now-established GOP candidates: Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman. A series [...]

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  • A Right to Opinions is Not a Right to One’s Own Facts

    A Right to Opinions is Not a Right to One’s Own Facts

    By the time a student in an American school reaches the fourth grade or so, he should be able to identify that the Earth, like all planets in our solar system, orbits the Sun. Yet according to a National Science Foundation poll conducted a few years ago, 24% of Americans believe that the Sun orbits the Earth, rather than the [...]

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  • Right…Right…Perfect!

    Right…Right…Perfect!

    When the recent debt deal was announced, the Republican candidates for the presidential nomination were expected to take a stand. Some made a statement early while others took longer. But in the end, every candidate but one (Gov. Jon Huntsman) came out against the deal. In other words, the average Republican presidential candidate is at the conservative end of the [...]

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  • A #Twist on Debating: Recapping the GOP Twitter Debate

    A #Twist on Debating: Recapping the GOP Twitter Debate

    On Wednesday, as debt deal talks continued to consume most politicians inside the beltway, the 2012 GOP presidential hopefuls stepped away from politics as usual toward the politics of the future — a Twitter debate. With all of the quoting (read: retweeting), finger-pointing (read: @mentioning) and following (read: following) inherent in any political debate, the Republican contenders and their followers [...]

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  • Weak T-Paw

    Weak T-Paw

    Tim Pawlenty mailed out a glossy mailer in Iowa this week. The mailer gushes (in beautiful color) about his time as governor of Minnesota. “Leadership is about results, not rhetoric,” it says. Mr. Pawlenty must hope that slogan is true when it comes to nominating campaigns. After being essentially four years into a presidential campaign, he is polling at 5%. [...]

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  • Who’s Afraid of Jon Huntsman?

    Who’s Afraid of Jon Huntsman?

    The magazine National Journal does a survey each week called the Political Insiders Poll. In the June 4th issue, the editors asked insiders from both parties to answer different questions. Democrats were asked, “Who would be the Republicans’ strongest presidential nominee in 2012?” That list was short, with clear front-runners. The first choice was, as with the Republicans, Mitt Romney [...]

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  • Bellwether or Bandwagon?

    Bellwether or Bandwagon?

    Earlier this week, I was looking at a New York Times graphic titled “Key States for Obama.” To my surprise, Missouri—what I would consider the ultimate swing state—did not feature on the list at all. Somewhere else I saw it referred to as a lost cause. Strange, given that it has voted for the winning candidate in 25 of the [...]

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  • Republican Debate Recap

    Republican Debate Recap

    Last night was the first major debate of the 2012 Republican Presidential Primary.  Seven candidates faced off to discuss issues ranging from economics to foreign policy and NASA to abortion.  Below I offer my assessment of each candidate’s performance: Tim Pawlenty: In my opinion, Tim Pawlenty won the debate.  He attacked Obama frequently, used colorful language (“stupid” and “chump”), and [...]

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  • Live Blogging the Republican Presidential Debate

    Live Blogging the Republican Presidential Debate

    CNN is live broadcasting the Republican Presidential Debate from Manchester, NH online at http://live.cnn.com and on television. The speakers are Tim Pawlenty, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney. 10:00 p.m. Romney’s closing remarks – what he has learned from the NH debate and the NH people – are that the economy will be [...]

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  • A quick and rather formless weekend post

    I’m sitting on a Megabus to D.C., and, as I’m rather bored and tired of rolling or widening my eyes in outrage and/or surprise, I thought I’d post a mish-mash of items with short comments. I know very little about India (outside of a few lectures I’ve heard on poverty and slums in South Asian mega-cities and the simple knowledge [...]

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